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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

We woke up to a torrential down pour on Thursday. So we headed to the American Museum of Natural History along with hundreds of other tourists in the city. When we arrived the line to get inside was wrapped the building! We decided to grab some lunch at Shake Shack and hoped that the line would die down. Once we were done with lunch and started walking back towards the museum we found a side door that only had a handful of people in line! We spent a couple hours exploring. I'm not a huge museum fan, but our rainy day activities were limited. Eventually, we made our way back to the hotel to freshen up.

Once we had freshened up and relaxed in the room for a little we made our way to John's for some NYC pizza. The pizza and drinks were good and I loved the ceiling! It looked like a pizza!

We spent our last night doing a little shopping in Times Square. There's nothing like Times Square all lit up at night.

Our flight home was scheduled for 1pm on Friday so our plan was to grab breakfast and then head to the airport. While at breakfast I received a text from American Airlines saying they were "unable to rebook" and to contact a customer service representative... uh what?! To make a long and stressful story short.. our flight had been cancelled and the earliest AA could get us on another flight was Monday! Cue panic... so the only option we had was getting a rental car and driving the 10+ hours home. It was not easy to find one, but the wonderful lady at Enterprise pulled through! An hour later we were in an Uber on our way to New Jersey to pick up the rental TRUCK.

Black Betty there went on her maiden voyage from NJ all the way to MI! Through rain, sleet, snow, wind, and sunshine. Besides the weather it was a pretty uneventful trip... except when I got pulled over on the Ohio Turnpike for not having the lights on :) The nice trooper helped us out and let us on our way. Always an adventure I swear!

We all had a great time and it was definitely a trip to remember :) Until next time NYC...

Friday, May 5, 2017

Day two was our busiest day of the trip, which is saying a lot after day one. We knew that it was going to be our best day weather wise and wanted to do as much as we possibly could! We got up bright and early, grabbed breakfast from a bagel shop next to our hotel, and hopped on the Subway. First on our agenda was checking out Fearless Girl and Charging Bull. I love, love, love Fearless Girl and everything she stands for!

From Wall Street we headed towards the Staten Island Ferry. I had read multiple "NYC Guides" about taking the free ferry, instead of a paid one, to get views of the NYC city skyline. I'm not sure it was actually any better, because their was no glass free area and the glass was filthy so getting any quality pictures was close to impossible. It was extremely foggy off of the river so either way pictures wouldn't have been the greatest, but I was really disappointed in the ones that I got.

Our next stop was the Chelsea Market. It was like the Grand Rapids Downtown Market on steroids. We grabbed lunch at Creamline where I had the most delicious grilled cheese, tomato soup, and chocolate milkshake! I highly recommend it.

We explored the Market and the shops inside for a while before heading back outside and hopping on the Highline. The Highline is a pathway made out of an old railroad and therefore is above ground. It was nice to get some more steps in and offered great views of the city! I also was blown away by the parking lot contraptions that you can see in the last Highline picture!! I highly recommend checking out both.

Once we had walked the Highline we headed back uptown. Next up on our list was heading to the Top of the Rock. We weren't able to prebook a ticket so we had an hour wait before we could head on up. We walked around Rockefeller Center to pass the time and I can definitely think of worse ways to kill time. The views at the top were incredible! I loved being able to see the Empire State Building from up above and I'd definitely recommend visiting Top of the Rock over Empire State. We stopped by the rink side restaurant for dinner on our way out and I love watching all of the people ice skating!

One of the main reasons for this trip was to see a show on Broadway. We decided on Waitress and it was amazing! Sara Bareilles wrote all of the music for the show and was set to star in it for a couple of weeks as well. Lucky for us, she was the star during our performance and she was downright amazing!

We decided that our extremely long day wasn't quite done and headed towards the Empire State Building after the show so that we could see the city all light up at night. On our way through Times Square we grabbed a $7 hot dog from one of the vendors and all I'll say is that the $7 ones at the ball park are way better! By the time we got to the Empire State Building the wait was 75 long minutes, but we did it.... only to get there for you not to be able to see ANYTHING due to clouds/fog. I was furious! We had just paid $30/pp and waited 75 minutes for nothing. So frustrating!

And on that note we called it a night. It was such a fun, but exhausting day!

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

RamblingsSpring Challenge | The Putting Me Together Spring Challenge is almost over and I'm so bummed about it! I love not having to think about what I'm going to wear in the morning. I've purchased quite a few things that have become staples for me and a few of them are shown in the photo above.Hospital Stay | My poor Grandpa has been having some complications with his Parkinson's medications and had to spend a few days in the hospital. It was a really difficult week for everyone, but thankfully he is back home and we're hopeful that his new medication will work better. Hospitals are no fun.Upcoming Events | Yesterday I started filling out my planner with all of the upcoming events we already have planned for the rest of this year. Holy moly, I'm a little overwhelmed as I wrote down over 20 events! How does life keep getting busier and busier?

Recent PurchasesRay-Ban Clubmasters | I had a giftcard to Macys burning a hole in my wallet and fell in love with these sunglasses. I personally prefer the smaller frames for both the Aviators and these Clubmasters so I was excited to find that size in the silver with blue lenses at Macys. I'm now on a ban from buying anymore sunglasses.Longchamp Backpack | I originally purchased this bag to take to New York, but then second guessed it due to it's smaller size and sent it back. After going to NY and being uncomfortable carrying my Longchamp tote on one shoulder I decided to order the backpack version again. This is why I drive my husband crazy :)Detroit Tigers Gear | I've had this zip up and a t-shirt in my cart for weeks now so when I got a 20% off coupon yesterday I pulled the trigger. Now we need to get to a game!

Wishlist

Erin Condren LifePlanner | The presale for the 2017-2018 LifePlanner went live on Monday and I picked out my next planner! How beautiful is that? I'm going to wait until the new Teacher Lesson Planners are released and then buy both of them together so that I only have to pay for shipping once :)Flying Fox Leigh Crossbody | Now that more and more stadiums/concert venues are going to clear bag policies I was on the search for a fashionable and good quality clear purse. I think I've found it! I'm going to wait for a coupon code, but one day it shall be mine!

Thursday, April 20, 2017

I mentioned on Monday that my Grandma, cousin, and I went to NYC over Spring Break. My grandma and I have both been dying to go back and it's not a location that Thomas is really interested in so we thought it'd be the perfect girls trip. The weather wasn't very cooperative, but we made the best of it.

Poor Duke wanted to go too!

I made the mistake of booking a 6:30am flight out of Detroit, which meant that we needed to head to the airport by 4:30am. I won't be doing that again! I like early morning flights, but that was a little too early. Not to mention that it was all for nothing since our plane got delayed two hours and then the weather in New York was crappy so flights were grounded for another hour. Oh and I should mention that we were on a pretty small hopper plane with only 50 or so seats. I have never been happier to land!

Once we landed, we caught a cab and headed to our hotel to drop off our bags. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square and thought it was a great home base for our trip. Once our bags were in our room and our rain boots were on we set off to explore. We also booked our CityPass, which was an awesome money saving tool this trip!

First on our agenda was visiting the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. We headed down to the Subway and made our way down there. I was so proud of myself for learning how to navigate the Subway system this trip. Typically I'm considered what one would call directionally challenged :)

I thought the museum was beautifully done. It was respectful, educational, and not too long or short. Don't plan on eating there though. The reflection pools were heartbreaking, but beautiful at the same time. It was incredible to see Ground Zero/One World Trade Center, because the last time I was in NYC was in 2006 and it was still complete rubble.

Since we were starving and it had started to rain, we walked to the nearest restaurant which happened to be O'Hara's. Decent food and we loved all of the firefighter/police patches stapled to the walls. We even found a Livonia, Michigan patch which was crazy. After eating we were all exhausted and decided to head back to the hotel for a little cat nap. It ended up being both a great idea and bad idea at the same time.

As soon as we woke up from our naps, we set out to do a little more exploring. Our first stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. The Cathedral opened in 1879 and has been breathtakingly beautiful ever since!

From there we made our way towards Grand Central Terminal. Grand it is... I was blown away by how big it was. We walked around for a while, checking out the market and food court area. I had quite a few Gossip Girl flashbacks!

By this point we were ready to call it a night. We had walked over eight miles so we headed back to the hotel. Since our hotel was in Times Square we got our first glance of it at night!